Rhion Jones comments on a timely contribution to an important debate.

Roy Payne has spent years working with sceptical communities around the world on programmes to secure sites for the long-term disposal of nuclear waste. We recently began talking to Roy about how the approaches being used might be relevant to more controversial parts of the latest Government’s growth agenda.

The Institute tries to keep abreast of key developments in public engagement and consultation, so we asked Roy to describe the emerging thinking.

Article by Roy Payne

The new Prime Minister claims to be a radical, prepared to take tough, unpopular decisions.  She’s also indicated that fracking could only proceed with the local community’s consent.

So, when it comes to the myriad infrastructure and intergenerational decisions which require local community engagement and consultation, just how ‘radical’ will she be — and is she prepared to take tough decisions which will be unpopular with the civil service and those who currently wield power?

If she is to deliver her vision of accelerating growth across the economy and country, by unleashing low-tax regional investment zones to attract vast new private funding into our infrastructure and industries, Liz Truss is likely to quickly hit the litigious brick wall of current planning and consultation processes.

She can then either fall back on the tried, tested, and generally-failed approach of circumventing consultation to reach and impose decisions more quickly, or she can be true to her commitments and take a genuinely more radical approach of engaging communities to establish broader-based ‘consent’.

The first option is the default position of policy officials across government and politicians at every level, while the latter takes them far out of their comfort zones.  However, there is already a new (and largely unknown) model for a consent-based approach to community engagement and consultation which might provide a ready answer everyone can live with.

This ‘Community Partnership’ model is in its very early implementation phases.  It was developed by the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to help find a community willing to host a deep underground facility for the permanent disposal of the nation’s most radioactive waste.  But the model’s principles are equally applicable to securing community ‘consent’ for fracking, onshore windfarms, and a wide range of other infrastructure projects.

‘Community Partnerships’ were designed to address many of the underlying limitations of our current approaches to community consultation and engagement, and to help build the foundations for informed community ‘consent’, eg:

• vest final decision-making on whether to proceed to construction in the hands of the community, rather than leave the decision to local politicians
• create space, time and a structured (and funded) framework for the community to evaluate the issues and address their concerns – unconstrained by the electoral cycle
• reach out beyond the minority who typically participate in community consultations, and engage with the wider, differing interests within a community, so that all voices can be heard, for and against

Given they are a unique and new model, with no established roadmap on how to implement, the emerging Community Partnerships are inevitably going through a birthing process.  The communities involved are suspicious of the authorities, and the authorities themselves have yet to learn to fully trust the communities, There is a need to develop  processes for ‘just’ decision-making, and build community capacity and capability to engage and participate meaningfully – these are critical if power is to be rebalanced, and the trust deficit bridged.

Radioactive waste disposal is a very niche corner of public policy, and less than a handful of communities are currently involved.  However, the concept of Community Partnerships might evolve more quickly if extended to other issues, such as fracking and onshore windfarms, because it would bring other players, like the Consultation Institute, into the discussion, providing practical and professional insight to inform and help accelerate progress.

As the Prime Minister presses the accelerator on her growth strategy, there is a risk that politicians and policy officials seeking to implement the strategy may default to the traditional route of identifying ways to by-pass meaningful consultation.  The 2020 Planning White Paper was the latest in a long line of humbled and withdrawn attempts.  But the Community Partnership model provides a ready-made starting point for arguing that time and resource invested up front in addressing community concerns and securing their consent will save time and significant costs further downstream.

The model could also set standards for both public and private sector players charged with managing such consultations.  Jacob Rees-Mogg and his BEIS team seem to be briefing that companies in the fracking sector will be tasked with securing appropriate advance community consent.  Leaving such delicate matters to self-interested commercial players is drawing inevitable sharp intakes of breath.  However, if common standards and principles are applied — and enforced — it should make little difference who is managing the consultation.  Indeed, it potentially lays the ground for tCI’s long-argued case for independent regulation of consultation.

You can read more about the Community Partnership model and policy in this government document.  It would be interesting to hear the thoughts and observations of tCI members, on how it might be applied more widely, and how bodies like the Institute might contribute to its development.

The Community Partnership model is not perfect.  There are many unresolved issues, such as how do we define ‘consent’.  But we know there is a pressing national need to build new infrastructure, aligned with an equally pressing need to take communities on the journey.

Given it is a model designed by BEIS, and potentially applicable to areas of primarily BEIS interest (fracking, renewable energy infrastructure), it does seem worthy of further investigation.

Roy Payne is a policy, communications and engagement consultant, who’s held senior positions in Government and corporate sectors.  For the past decade he’s worked internationally on addressing the issues of community ‘consent’ for contentious infrastructure projects.  Contact Roy Payne here.